Saturday July 1st saw the annual anti-choice parade and yet again RTE (state ran media) reported a grossly inflated figure of the number marching. They headlined it as ‘tens of thousands’ and in the body of the article quoted the organisers claiming 70,000 without further comment, appearing to endorse it. As we are going to show below at the very least that’s a tenfold exaggeration, in fact by our count about 5300 people took part. And while that estimate might be out by 10 or even 20% its physically impossible for it to be out by up to 1500% as that would require ten people too fit into a one meter square space.

We use the same counting methodologies (see below) for almost every demonstration that takes place in Dublin, from huge anti water charges protests to smaller but still significant ones on a huge range of issues. We do these sorts of counts more than a dozen times a year. We don’t always publicise the numbers we reach - organisers always tend to overestimate somewhat, most often guessing a figure that is twice what actually attended. Generally we agree with what the demands of a demonstration are so we don’t want to appear to undermine it by publicly providing real numbers. But we do count, we do use those counts internally in the WSM and we often communicate them directly to organisers.

In mid August the story emerged that a suicidal migrant who was pregnant as the result of rape was forced to continue the pregnancy for weeks after requesting an abortion despite both a failed suicide attempt and a hunger and thirst strike. After been forcible rehydrated she 'agreed' to a C-section as an 'alternative' to the abortion she had first requested 8 weeks into the pregnancy. (See www.wsm.ie/migant-x for more details).

Thousands of people took part in demonstrations against her terrible treatment across Ireland, treatment that reflected the racist patriarchal authorisation nature of the Irish state. Astonishingly the forced birth brigade rather than maintaining a shamed silence actually protested that the state had not forced her to continue the pregnancy to its conclusion.

Long time followers of this site will be familiar with these posts. For rather transparent reasons to do with North America funding the bigot brigade ridiculously exaggerate numbers who attend their anti-choice protests and then massively under estimate the numbers who attend pro-choice protests. They have to keep the yankee dollar convinced after all that the people of Ireland are with them rather than running as fast as possible in the opposite direction. No dollars, no full time paid positions, offices and very expensive advertising campaigns.

Saturday in Dublin saw another desperate attempt by the anti-choice coalition to prevent legislation coming to the Dail (Irish parliament) to allow abortion where a women's life is under threat. Despite months of preparation, a spend that must have ran close to a million euro, and the parish priest at every mass in the country telling catholics they should attend, less than 15,000 turned up. Compared to the 150,000 women who have had to travel to obtain abortions in the last decades this amounts to almost nothing, a handful of bigots bussed in from all over the country. [Italian translation]

Every now and again something winds you up a little too much and you find yourself being a little obcessive in response. On hearing RTE had reported a daft figure of 8000 as attending tonights anti-choice rally this happened to me. It was very clear this was a massive overestimate but then how to produce an actual calculation of an event in the past. But then the anti-choice movement gave a hand and posted a video of the entire rally, shot it appears from the roof of Buswells.

Something in the region of 2000 people who demand that women in Ireland should have to carry to term unwanted pregnancies in any situation organised a demonstration at the Dail this evening (4th Dec). They were trying to prevent the government legislating for abortion in the very limited circumstances of the X-Case - some 20 years after the Supreme court told them such legislation was required.

Saturday 29 September saw thousands march through Dublin as part of the March for Choice and as usual I was there with my camera. I'd been part of the organising group for the event but my task for the day itself was photography, just as well as it turned out. The slideshow here is composed of some of my better pictures from the day, as usual you will find a very much larger collection in the WSM March for Choice Facebook Album.